Sonya Yoncheva’s new album, her first for Naïve, examines the life and world of George Sand through the work of musicians and writers who were her friends or lovers. ‘Throughout her life, she dared’, Yoncheva writes in a booklet note, and like its subject, the disc flouts convention in order to achieve its aims. It’s closer to a concept album than a recital, and words are as integral to it as music: Yoncheva speaks as well as sings, and the disc is interspersed with self-styled ‘echoes’, in which she recites prose and poetry, mostly over fragmentary replays of preceding instrumental tracks.

One might expect the programme to centre on Chopin and Liszt, though Yoncheva expands the focus to give equal if not greater prominence to Alfred de Musset, Sand’s lover from 1833 to 1835, and Pauline Viardot, a lifelong friend and the model for the title character in Sand’s 1842 novel Consuelo and its 1843 sequel La comtesse de Rudolstadt. Connections and parallels between the friends and lovers are repeatedly drawn. Musset poured his desire for Sand into his verse, and Yoncheva recites his erotic ‘À George Sand’, describing the affair’s consummation, over an ‘echo’ of Chopin’s transcription of ‘Casta diva’ from Norma. Musset’s bitter Nuit de décembre, written after the relationship collapsed, is heard in a beautiful setting by Leoncavallo, a great admirer of the poet’s work. The ‘Ballade à la lune’ from Offenbach’s opera Fantasio (the libretto is by Musset’s brother Paul) derives from a play by Musset from 1834 when the affair was at its height.

Viardot’s ‘Madrid’, meanwhile, gives us more Musset (from Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie, the collection that put him on the map in 1830), and she is also represented by two of her vocal arrangements of Chopin’s Mazurkas, party pieces for divas until the turn of the 20th century (there are delicious recordings from 1907 by Marcella Sembrich). Viardot’s Romance for violin and piano prefaces a letter from Sand to the actress Marie Dorval: very much a love letter, irrespective whether the relationship was physical or not (opinions differ). The climax comes with Liszt’s Liebestraum No 3 and Sand’s own beautiful reflections on music as an expression of the freedom of the human spirit, before closing with Viardot’s ‘Les bohémiennes’, gloriously asserting sexual independence, albeit to a vocal arrangement of Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No 5.

It’s all superbly done, though the actual recording sometimes places voices too far forwards and the piano too far back. Yoncheva sounds sumptuous, with that hint of metal or even almost of acid in the tone that can be so appealingly and tellingly expressive. The operatic weight of some of it is not out of place: Nuit de décembre is a scena in everything but name and there are melodic similarities with ‘Stridono lassù’ from Pagliacci; and Viardot’s songs are to some extent grand in manner and intended for display. Yoncheva’s voice blends beautifully with Marina Viotti’s in ‘Les bohémiennes’ and the second of Viardot’s Chopin transcriptions. The recitations are nicely understated, and instrumental contributions are first-rate. Sweet-toned violinist Adam Taubnitz has too little to do, though Olga Zado, an excellent accompanist, also gives us no-frills if eloquent Chopin and Liszt. The booklet includes no translations (a big mistake, here), and there are inconsistencies in the French texts between what is printed and sung. But otherwise, it’s a fine album and a fascinating